Guest column: The long' con alive and well in NJ

By Jim Carlucci, For The Trentonian

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Longevity pay for elected officials is just wrong!

Unfortunately, it is not a practice isolated to Trenton municipal government. There seems to be this “philosophy” that if the union rank and file are entitled to longevity pay, then the appointed and elected officials are as well.

In some jurisdictions, the governing bodies at least took the trouble to write the longevity pay for public officials into the law. That made the practice “legal” but not appropriate, IMO.

The state of New Jersey has recognized this as a problem and recommends in its generic MOU drafted for all municipalities that receive Transitional Aid that the practice be discontinued; the laws amended to remove the longevity pay for elected officials.

Newark Mayor Corey Booker spoke about this in his state of the city address earlier this year. This past August, the Newark city council amended the salary ordinances to eliminate the longevity pay clause.

This brings us back to Trenton.

I completely believe Ms. Holly-Ward when she says she questioned it when she got her first paycheck as a city councilwoman. I believe that she was told by the payroll department that “that’s the way it works.”

Former councilman Paul Pintella says he received longevity pay because the rank and file union members do.

To the best of my knowledge Mr. Pintella was never a rank and file city employee qualified to receive longevity pay under the terms of the union contract. The practice of extending this benefit to elected officials appears to never have been codified into law. I have found nothing in the existing city code that grants elected officials longevity pay…either because they have been re-elected or because they moved from city employee to elected official.

Further, I seem to recall reading somewhere along the line that former Mayor Doug Palmer received longevity pay as well. Again, I would say that was improper and even illegal.

The argument that elected officials are automatically entitled to the same longevity pay as that granted in the union contracts is false. If you recall, the courts struck down the last pay raise Mr. Palmer granted himself and his directors because it was not done by ordinance as required by law. Instead, he tried to slip it through on the council resolution authorizing the settlement of the union contracts.

In Ms. Holly-Ward’s case, she did earn the extra pay from her full-time employment. That ceased when she was sworn in as an elected official. Salaries for the mayor, business administrator, municipal clerk, council members and department directors are set by council via ordinance. If the ordinance doesn’t grant longevity pay, it cannot legally be paid.

Once again we have a practice that is “wrong” but continues on through the lack of experience and knowledge on our governing body and in our administration. A “mistake” based simply on “the way it has been done in the past.”

The councilwoman should write a check back to the city for the money she was wrongly paid.

On the administration side, they have proposed three budgets that included this improper payment of longevity pay to the councilwoman. Why is it only now that they are raising a fuss over it? Mayor Mack would be wise to apologize to the councilwoman for the false accusations and pay closer attention to what is going on.